After Brexit - am I stupid or what?

No

 

Mossmorran is the Ethylene cracker plant I lived near. One of my colleagues worked there and he told the story of how one early shift in February they turned up to 6 inches of snow covering the site. The snow stopped falling at 07:00 and at 08:00 they started to flare from the high-level stack. By 10:00, not only had the snow melted, but the entire 133-acre site was bone dry.

 

They have always run high-level and ground flares. Both Shell and ExxonMobil have sites there. If this is to replace the high-level flares then great. I lived 6 miles from the site and on a big flare and low cloud (Scotland, so always low cloud) I could read a book in bed of a night.

 

When I worked on the Brent oilfield in the early 1980's we were on the drilling deck wearing light overalls with the sleeves rolled up, above us was a high level flare. Walking off the deck it was snowing a blizzard with temperatures well below freezing. If you looked out to sea in every direction you could see rigs flaring as far as the eye could see, a colossal waste of fuel.